Tourism Australia leaning on cricketers, Bollywood stars to lure more Indian travellers to visit Down Under

Sydney -  Australian tourism officials are targeting Bollywood stars and cricketers to attract more Indian travelers to visit the country.

Tourism Australia is targeting Delhi and Mumbai because the cities not only have an emerging middle class but also India's highest concentration of affluent households.

"We have put a huge effort into attracting tourists from China recently and the next cab off the rank is India," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Minister for Tourism, Martin Ferguson, who unveiled an India 2020 strategic plan last month at the annual Australian Tourism Exchange in Perth, as saying.

The plan meant that Tourism Australia's "There's Nothing Like Australia" campaign will be rolled out in Delhi and Mumbai along with extensive advertising on TV and digital channels as well  as print, the paper said.

Tourism Australia will reportedly be spending 5 million dollars on the India campaign in the next year and will also use cricketers and Bollywood stars to spruce the virtues of holidaying in the  Pacific-continent.

Cricketers such as Steve Waugh and Brett Lee have already acted as advocates in the past, and more Australian Indian Premier League (IPL) players may be recruited, the paper said.

India, along with China, has one of the world's fastest-growing outbound travel markets, while more than 50 million Indians are expected to take overseas trips by 2020.

India is also Australia's 11th-biggest inbound tourism market, bringing in 148,200 visitors who spent 867 million dollars last year, but by 2020 officials say that could reach 300,000 visitors  spending 2.3 billion dollars.